The hardware of a computer system generally includes a host motherboard, various interface cards and magnetic disk drives (such as floppy disk drives, hard disk drives, optical disk drives and the like). This equipment is housed in a chassis, or a computer chassis. The computer chassis includes a case that has a housing space and a cover to seal the housing space. As the magnetic disk drives can be configured selectively, to facilitate installation and expansion, the computer chassis usually includes pre-configured disk drive frames to allow the disk drives to be installed or removed as desired.
At present fastening of the disk drives is mostly accomplished with fastening screws. That is, first load the disk drive in the frame already installed on the computer chassis; then fasten the disk drive to the frame through screws. Such a fastening method has disadvantages. For instance, during installation of the disk drive, workers on the production line have to use screw drivers to fasten the screws repeatedly. Production process is thus complicated and tedious. To improve production efficiency is difficult.
To remedy this problem, many disk drive fastening mechanisms have been developed to simplify the operation. One approach is to attach screws on the disk frame of the disk drive so that the disk drive can be fastened to the computer chassis by latching. But this still requires screw drivers for assembly and disassembly. Other references can be found in R.O.C. patent publication Nos. 430238, 486134 and 535044.
R.O.C. patent No. 430238 places two plates on two sides of the disk drive to serve as sliding tracks so that the disk drive can be loaded into the frame of the computer chassis by sliding without using screw drivers.
R.O.C. patent No. 486134 includes latching elements to latch an upper case and a lower case for housing a disk drive manually. The latching elements are connected to the upper case and inserted into apertures the lower case on corresponding positions. Hence the disk drive can be mounted onto the computer chassis without using screw drivers.
R.O.C. patent No. 535044 proposes a main frame with turnable fastening bolt and a fastening hook to be anchored by anchoring struts of the computer chassis so that the disk drive can be mounted on the computer chassis without using screw drivers.